OFFICIAL - Comments and Suggestions to Improve the Forum

[SirKenin]

For the most part I think things are handled quite well. That notwithstanding I do have a few suggestions of my own based on observations.

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Off Topic forum should be handled just like the Buy and Sell forum. A minimum 100 posts to participate.

The buy and sell forum should be approval only. No thread gets posted without approval by a mod first. On the same token, there should be no commercial advertising allowed. Private sales only.

All attempts at spam should not only be locked, the member should be banned and the link immediately removed. Posts that are suspect are first time posters that post a link and say "Is this legit?". Rather obvious. Especially the one I exposed as a fraud. The problem is is that Google indexes your threads, and this increases exposure for the spammer, increases his link backs and thus boosts his ranking. These people should not be given that satisfaction.

Members should have at least 100 posts before they are allowed to post links and images. This will significantly decrease the amount of spam you receive without having to be on top of the pricks.

I do not think activity should be decreased to the OT forum other than a minimum number of posts. Encourage the traffic. Threads of "I'm leaving" (nobody gives a shit) or "I'm bored" (yes, I posted one once) or anything similar should be deleted on sight.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

There are a couple of ideas. I have to go to the store with my wife. If I think of anything else I'll add them later.

[The_Beast]

Originally Posted by SirKenin

For the most part I think things are handled quite well. That notwithstanding I do have a few suggestions of my own based on observations.

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Off Topic forum should be handled just like the Buy and Sell forum. A minimum 100 posts to participate.

The buy and sell forum should be approval only. No thread gets posted without approval by a mod first. On the same token, there should be no commercial advertising allowed. Private sales only.

All attempts at spam should not only be locked, the member should be banned and the link immediately removed. Posts that are suspect are first time posters that post a link and say "Is this legit?". Rather obvious. Especially the one I exposed as a fraud. The problem is is that Google indexes your threads, and this increases exposure for the spammer, increases his link backs and thus boosts his ranking. These people should not be given that satisfaction.

Members should have at least 100 posts before they are allowed to post links and images. This will significantly decrease the amount of spam you receive without having to be on top of the pricks.

I do not think activity should be decreased to the OT forum other than a minimum number of posts. Encourage the traffic. Threads of "I'm leaving" (nobody gives a shit) or "I'm bored" (yes, I posted one once) or anything similar should be deleted on sight.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

There are a couple of ideas. I have to go to the store with my wife. If I think of anything else I'll add them later.

The bolded one is the only one I don't like. All the other ones I like except maybe the 100 post to go on the off-topic may be a bit to extreme.

[mrbagrat]

Originally Posted by SirKenin

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

Good point, hope to see that.

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Same as above

Off Topic forum should be handled just like the Buy and Sell forum. A minimum 100 posts to participate.

What I said. Is there a way to have the forum check the post count rather then have people say "You need x posts to post here?"
Like, it gives you a message saying "You do not have sufficient privaleges to post here".

The buy and sell forum should be approval only. No thread gets posted without approval by a mod first.

Meh, I think approval is a bit too harsh, coupled with the 100 post thing.

On the same token, there should be no commercial advertising allowed. Private sales only.

The people who have done commercial advertising, didn't really care about forum rules. To my knowledge, they were all chinese companies selling some product.

All attempts at spam should not only be locked, the member should be banned and the link immediately removed. Posts that are suspect are first time posters that post a link and say "Is this legit?". Rather obvious. Especially the one I exposed as a fraud. The problem is is that Google indexes your threads, and this increases exposure for the spammer, increases his link backs and thus boosts his ranking. These people should not be given that satisfaction.

I think temporarily banned for the first or second offenses, then perma-banned for the last.

Members should have at least 100 posts before they are allowed to post links and images. This will significantly decrease the amount of spam you receive without having to be on top of the pricks.

Excellent idea.

I do not think activity should be decreased to the OT forum other than a minimum number of posts. Encourage the traffic. Threads of "I'm leaving" (nobody gives a shit) or "I'm bored" (yes, I posted one once) or anything similar should be deleted on sight.

Agreed, again.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

I think links in sigs should be fine. As long as they aren't links to questionable sites.

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

That seems to complicated.

There are a couple of ideas. I have to go to the store with my wife. If I think of anything else I'll add them later.
Have fun.

Some excellent points raised, Kenin.


Edit: How about an announcements subforum? Only mods and admins could posts, for announcements about the forums or other things we computer people might be interested in.

[holyjunk]

Originally Posted by SirKenin

For the most part I think things are handled quite well. That notwithstanding I do have a few suggestions of my own based on observations.

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Off Topic forum should be handled just like the Buy and Sell forum. A minimum 100 posts to participate.

The buy and sell forum should be approval only. No thread gets posted without approval by a mod first. On the same token, there should be no commercial advertising allowed. Private sales only.

All attempts at spam should not only be locked, the member should be banned and the link immediately removed. Posts that are suspect are first time posters that post a link and say "Is this legit?". Rather obvious. Especially the one I exposed as a fraud. The problem is is that Google indexes your threads, and this increases exposure for the spammer, increases his link backs and thus boosts his ranking. These people should not be given that satisfaction.

Members should have at least 100 posts before they are allowed to post links and images. This will significantly decrease the amount of spam you receive without having to be on top of the pricks.

I do not think activity should be decreased to the OT forum other than a minimum number of posts. Encourage the traffic. Threads of "I'm leaving" (nobody gives a shit) or "I'm bored" (yes, I posted one once) or anything similar should be deleted on sight.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

There are a couple of ideas. I have to go to the store with my wife. If I think of anything else I'll add them later.

I like that idea. Though maybe consider 300 posts to be allowed to.

[Burgerbob]

I really like SirKenin's proposals, best that I have heard so far.

[4W4K3]

Originally Posted by The_Beast

The bolded one is the only one I don't like. All the other ones I like except maybe the 100 post to go on the off-topic may be a bit to extreme.

lol, that was actually the one i thought was a great idea. No more spammers!

[Bobo]

Originally Posted by SirKenin

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

That's an interesting suggestion...I'm not sure if I agree with it or not. It is a good idea, but the mods were also picked because of their expertise in the area that they moderate....

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Definitely.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

With a few exceptions, such as the F@H links

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

That would be awfully difficult to implement.

[Lamilia]

Oh my god..You made the thread. This is the best birthday present ever *sniff*.

[apj101]

This is my take on SirKenins comments. It is not an official view, as discussion are still undergoing on which if any changes we will take.

Mods should not be allowed to enter into any debate on any topic. The reason is simple. They have the ability to abuse their power and shut down the thread after making their jabs. Don't say it won't happen. It already has.

Were that to happen, most mods would resign back to normal members. Lets not forget mods are made mod because they have excellent knowledge in their area, and like to share it. The removal of this knowledge resource would end the effectiveness of this site. There is often a lot of factually incorrect data, and bias within some posts, if correction of these errors were left up to our members then it would lead to many more arguments. The errors need correcting to maintain the integrity of the data, and its best that a mod is the one tell someone they are *polite cough* wrong.

Mods should be suspended or their status revoked if they are caught flaming other members (calling someone an idiot comes to mind). Mods should be setting an example to everyone else. If they can't do that, they have no business being a moderator IMO.

Mods flame on very few occasions, we often correct errors in a more efficient way, without pleasantries. Simply because we are too busy to say “please” and “thank you”, and 'you have a good point', or 'i think you may be wrong'. Sometimes its best to be straight and to the point.
As for calling people an idiot, when you are correcting something for 100th time its easy to get a little irritated, As I’m sure you are aware.
I personally will take these comments on board and take a look at how I deal with misleading user posts.

Off Topic forum should be handled just like the Buy and Sell forum. A minimum 100 posts to participate.

While a good idea (<- See im doing it already), this would be a nightmare to moderate. We have enough trouble doing that in the for-sale section, in off topic we would need a dozen moderators to achieve this task

The buy and sell forum should be approval only. No thread gets posted without approval by a mod first.

Again this would be very hard to moderate and the feature is not available in vbulletin and making modification to vbulletin is not recommended since it impacts updates

On the same token, there should be no commercial advertising allowed. Private sales only.

this is already in place, the only commercial sales allowed to post in For-Sale are the ones from the 2 companies that pay support to the site, Ian incurs personal cost when running this site, and this helps him recoup a little

All attempts at spam should not only be locked, the member should be banned and the link immediately removed.

that already happens, if a users first post(s) are at spam related the thread is removed asap, and the user banned. Believe me, this occupies a significant amount of mod/admin time, and was a big reason why sfr was moved to super mod... so we could keep on top of mounting spam At most is take 12hours for a noticed spam to be removed

Members should have at least 100 posts before they are allowed to post links and images. This will significantly decrease the amount of spam you receive without having to be on top of the pricks.

hmm, and interesting one, Im not sure if this can be implemented or not in vbulletin, but we will discuss it.

I do not think activity should be decreased to the OT forum other than a minimum number of posts. Encourage the traffic. Threads of "I'm leaving" (nobody gives a shit) or "I'm bored" (yes, I posted one once) or anything similar should be deleted on sight.

When deciding our policy for modding off topic it is important to get the balance right. We need to keep it a place to be free to chat, as this improves our own google ranking. Whilst I agree that the example you gave should be deleted it's difficult to policy for every example, and hence judgement is required on the part of Jan, Dragon, SFR.

Links should not be allowed in sigs at all. This will prevent arbitrary enforcement of the rules and prevent people from unfairly being singled out.

Im not sure the best way to address this issue is through a blanket ban. We are in the process of firming up our policy regarding links in sigs. But remember sometimes we just don’t check all the sig links and may miss some that we would otherwise removed.

An appeal program should be put in place via software whereby an offender can click on the appeal button in an official warning and be forwarded to a private forum where s/he can launch an appeal process to be reviewed by staff and senior staff collectively. This forum should be made so that only the appellant and the staff can read their individual thread.

10/10 for creativity, now if you could just design such a feature and submit it to the vbulliten team I’m sure Ian would give it a try. I’m not trying to belittle your idea, but it would be a monumental undertaking to implement Best thing to do if you want to appeal is PM SFR/Ian/another mod with your complaint.

In general however people should really not take offence if we delete one of your threads, it is not a personal attack. We rarely look at user names when determining actions and our actions are always because we all honestly feel that it is the right decision for the site

There are a couple of ideas. I have to go to the store with my wife. If I think of anything else I'll add them later.

please do, I enjoyed reading them and you raised some interesting points that we will look into.

[Archangel]

I dont think we should give the Mod's even more work than they have already... If all members would use a bit more common sense (I'm not saying none of you does, or anything like that) and just doesnt post anything that should be moderated,.. it would make their Job a lot easyer.
I know... this basicly is impossible to achieve...

My point... Everyone should really think befor ethey post something.. sure... if you have a problem with something, ofcourse you make a new threat, because then its pretty certain you get a clear answer to it.

But imo... all this forum needs is a bit more understanding for eachother,.. and especially a bit more common sense,.. and patience.

C.